The commissioners took possession easily of Vera Cruz, and then proceeded to Orizaba, where a conference was opened with Juarez. The demand for payment was readily acknowledged, and the commissioners for Spain and England at once withdrew their troops. But the French remained. The proclamation issued by the commissioners, declaring their presence in Mexico was for no other purpose than that of settling vexed questions, had served as a reason for introducing their troops. The expedition was undertaken in good faith by the English and Spanish governments, but when their commissioners found that a deeper question was involved, they extricated themselves and their governments from the affair and went away. A plan had been formed in the court of the Tuileries, by Napoleon III., encouraged and even instigated by Mexican refugees who had sought the court of France, disgusted with the liberal turn of affairs in their own country. Among these were Gutierrez de Estrada, the ex-President Miramon, and others of the clergy party, who were opposed entirely to the supremacy of Juarez, and wanted above all things to bring back a monarchy to Mexico. At the same time the Archbishop of Mexico, robbed as he said of the property of his Church, warmly advocated the same cause at Rome. The plan was to select a prince of some European house, and place him upon the throne left vacant since the abdication of Agustin I. in the capital of the Aztec Emperors. Estrada, indeed, was living in exile, on account of his pamphlet proposing this scheme. Napoleon III. accepted these overtures with alacrity, and at once furnished troops, money, and influence to the alluring idea of "opposing the Latin race to the invasion of Anglo-Saxons" in the New World--that is, to check the supremacy of the United States upon the western continent, and establish an Empire in Mexico, which, nominally independent, would be under his own control, and thus add to the glory of the French nation. The time was opportune, for the United States were then engrossed in a civil war, which absorbed all their resources. The government at Washington could not give its attention to affairs in Mexico, and Napoleon hoped, in the not improbable event of the success of the Southern States, that there would be no danger of interference from that quarter. The demands of the commissioners, therefore, were but an excuse for entering the country. Relying on the representatives of the Mexican _émigrés_, which promised cordial support from the clerical party at home, the French advanced towards the capital of Mexico. Meanwhile, the future Emperor had been found. Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph, Archduke of Austria, of the house of Hapsburg Lorraine, accepted the proposition secretly made him by Napoleon, to become Emperor of Mexico. [Illustration: ARCHDUKE MAXIMILIAN.]